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by Terry Reiber
This year’s "Greenbuild International Conference and Expo," held November 19-21 at the Boston Exhibition Center was another blow-out conference. Organized by the venerable U. S. Green Building Council, it was shoulder to shoulder at many of the hundreds of booths, attracting about 25,000 attendees.
Despite the broad-based slowdown in the construction industry and concern about its impact on green building, participants seemed very happy with the business they lined up during the conference. Some exhibitors were so busy I had to stand in line to speak with them, with visits limited to two minutes or less!
One booth gained almost "rock star" status – the Kirei display. Who knew people could get so inspired about wheatboard made from agriculture waste and ply panels and veneers made from bamboo?! Or maybe it was the EcoTop recycled and bamboo countertops that so excited people – they shared the booth. There’s no question – Bamboo is in! Luckily, there was no Wal-Mart-style stampede, but there was so much buzz it was hard to even get close to the booth.
If you’re interested in flooring, the forest-like TerraMai exhibit showed off their "to die for" exotic recycled woods. They also make siding & paneling, decking, beams & lumber, all hard to resist. Yolo Colorhouse, from Portland Oregon, also had a great display. We tried our hands at an old fashioned paint spinning wheel – creating colorful swatches with their environmental paint products. A great group of people.
On the efficiency side, Hydronics Components showed how they could re-engineer piping terminators (wow!) so that less material is needed to complete a project.
I had a quick chat with Jim Hall, Senior Manager of Quality Assurance, from Waste Management and got the impression they’re taking Eco Leadership seriously. The WM Green Squad works with customers to analyze their upstream supply chain, finding ways to increase recycling, reduce energy and water consumption, and even green their events.
Will Detroit take notice? You have to wait six months to get your hands on a Honda Civic GX natural gas powered car. From what I heard, some people are buying the car and turning it around and selling it for a profit. People fill up the car at home and pay about $1.10 per gallon equivalent.
Some of us scratched our heads at the Destiny – America’s first Eco-Sustainable City display. This 41,300 acre development in Central Florida includes a 400-acre energy research park, a sustainable energy farm, and a multi-model transportation system. The vision is a "new city" that’s a self-contained, sustainable, networked community centered around an urban core, with inter-connected villages and strategically placed Eco-Industrial Preserves. A new city … sustainable? So big?
There were plenty of green architects, green designers and larger corporate customers, but I didn’t notice many people from small constructions firms or representing the trades. From what I heard people talking about, one of the problems for the green building industry is there’s still a hole at "Main Street." Although there’s strong demand from the public for green features in home renovation, the average tradesperson doesn’t have the knowledge, skill and access to green products and green construction techniques. Either tradespeople aren’t getting the green message or they’re still resistant to change. Customers seem to still have to drag their contractors to the altar of green.
Generally though, at least for new construction, people view green building as past the tipping point. LEED certification is clearly gaining momentum in the market, with strong growth in certification applications. Even those that don’t apply for LEED are incorporating energy and water efficient features as standard practice now.
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Terry Reiber is Director of Marketing, SustainableBusiness.com.
Contact Terry.
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